(image via Square America)

MR TRUELOVE

Mr. Truelove was a messenger from God, but he was quiet about his charge. It was not the sort of thing one paraded on the street corner like a Pharisee, promoting your direct link with the Almighty for all to see.

Mr. Truelove was nothing if not modest.

Only select persons received Mr. Truelove’s message of grace and forgiveness. These chosen ones received the message after great deliberation and patience on the part of the messenger.

Mr. Truelove traveled from town to town in his capacity as an itinerant music teacher (organ lessons $2 per session, vocal training $3 for the teacher felt the extra dollar was ample compensation for putting up with most students’ tuneless pulings) and had many opportunities to discern who was and who was not worthy of his message.

Ann Berberding of Pekin, Illinois was not worthy. Possessed of a lovely contralto voice, Ann was easy enough on the ears, but her stable and happy marriage to a preacher named Randolph made it clear she was already in the yellow lights of God’s brilliant gaze. Mr. Truelove was sad when he finally left Pekin and Ann’s voice behind.

Grace Tumpkin of Weldon Falls, Iowa was quite worthy. During their first organ lesson, Grace bobbled while practicing the C Mixolydian scale. She swore: “Oh, dammit.”

Mr. Truelove, reclined beside his student in a cane-backed chair, pulled a small, worn reporter’s notebook from his pocket and noted the words for posterity. He then attached Grace’s name and the word, “anointed.”

The following day Mr. Truelove arrived early for the lesson.

Grace Tumpkin was blinded by the yellow lights of God’s eyes and rendered eternally supplicant by Mr. Truelove’s true ax.

Silently he moved on, driving his old yellow car with the missing back seat.

There would be many more anointed in the years to come. Perhaps the strangest thing about this was the fact that no one ever matched the trail of anointed to any discernible pattern. For Mr. Truelove told many students, with a sly smile on his thin lips, “tell no one, surprise them with the glory of your much-improved playing/singing.”

He was always surprised at how many complied with this admonition.

The final anointed was a teenaged girl named Sally Harrell. Mr. Truelove, though old by then, was struck first by her beauty. Even though he was in his 60s and had long ago ceased to spread his message more than a few times a year, Mr. Truelove hoped Sally would reveal herself as one of the anointed. She had soft yellow hair and cornflower eyes and shimmery, translucent skin.

As he gave her piano lessons each day at her mother’s sturdy upright in the parlor - which by now so many were beginning to call the den, as if it were used by animals, or even “the living room” - Mr. Truelove silently prayed for a sign from the yellow eyes of God ever burning in his head that Sally needed to hear the message.

The sign came outside the town library. Mr. Truelove had gone in for his usual daily reads - a music magazine, the New York Times and selections from Sister Anne’s Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ (he still thrilled to Jesus’s bloody slog towards Golgotha and doubted he would ever lose his devotion to that portion of the German nun’s revealed text in particular) - and was exiting the tall maple doors when he saw Sally Harrell.

“Mr. T_____, hello!” said the bright-faced girl. She only knew his birth name.

“Hello, Sally.” As always he was quiet and grave.

“Say, Mr. T_____, I was out taking photographs for a school assignment. It’d be swell if I could get your picture, sir.”

Mr. Truelove looked down at this and sighed. Finally, a revelation. He looked back up at Sally and smiled. “Of course, young lady, click away.”

She seemed taken aback for a moment, and Mr. Truelove knew why; he rarely smiled.

So she clicked away as he stood there, taking at least 3 frames.

She has me now, he thought as Sally thanked him and bounced off down the library steps. She has a part of me inside that box.

Sally was anointed.

Mr. Truelove parked in front of the Harrell home and got out of his old yellow car. The night air was rich with autumnal scents - leaf smoke, mold, rot and ripeness.

He had changed into his dark suit, his “preaching outfit.”

Though he was old and looked fragile he moved with great stealth across the front lawn of the Harrell home and silently onto the front porch. The lock was simple enough to divine. He silently thanked the lights from God’s blazing eyes for showing him the way as he popped the tumblers loose and slipped into the foyer.

The girl’s room was off the kitchen, the parents’ room upstairs. If Mr. Truelove took great care and was very quiet, he would not have to send the parents to heaven with their daughter. God’s eyes flared (cold phosphor, thought Mr. Truelove with a bit of a chill) angrily when he stepped outside the boundaries of his message and sent others along with the anointed to heaven.

As he detached from the shadows and entered the dim light of the girl’s room (a small shell-shaped nightlight, mellow and warm, was stuck in an electrical socket near the door) Mr. Truelove realized something was very wrong. A larger shadow coalesced in front of him and a low voice spoke. “What are you doing here?”

The girl’s father, Mr. Harrell, whom Mr. Truelove had never met.

Mr. Truelove had no answer, so he brought the true ax whickering around, aiming for the larger man’s jugular.

But Edwin Harrell, who had been a Marine and survived and thrived through the horrors of Guadalcanal, was far too fast for the old man. The true ax was blocked by a blow and Mr. Truelove felt a huge explosion of pain in his solar plexus as Harrell punched him twice, in rapid succession. He doubled over, wheezing, and backed up to the wall. Dimly he could hear Sally’s voice, high and tremulous, saying “Daddy?”

I’m sorry, child, thought Mr. Truelove, I am so sorry I can’t confer this blessing upon you.

At that thought he rallied, a true soldier of God. Mr. Truelove found his legs and reared up again, reaching inside his suit coat for the small black revolver he’d only used once before.

But Edwin Harrell, spooked by the ax, wasn’t taking the slender, frail wraith in front of him for granted. He ran full on into Mr. Truelove, knocking the wind out of the man again, hearing a rib crack in the process.

Mr. Truelove, whom the Harrells had only known as old Mr. T_____, the music teacher, uttered a wheezing cry and lurched to the left. He had lost his grip on the gun and was seeking the true ax.

Harrell followed him to the floor, Sally screaming now, “What’s going on? Daddy?? MR. T_____??”

Edwin Harrell reached the true ax first. He brought it whistling around.

The last things Mr. Truelove heard were Sally Harrell’s horrified screams as she reached to light switch and saw the bloody tableau before her and a snippet of music from somewhere inside his head. Bach, I think, thought Mr. Truelove.

Then all sound slipped away and one final, awed, horrified thought remained:

GOD’S TRUE EYES ARE RED.

AND THEY BRING SUCH TERRIBLE PAIN.